A Little Help from My Friends, Please.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I have searched and searched again. Google and AltaVista have taken a proverbial hammering but still NO joy!! So any help really appreciated on this one.

I am looking for a map, ideally digital but I can scan an image if it is paper and not too large. The map area should be of the Caribbean and should be only land and sea. No text. No contours. Just land and sea. The map, if digital, needs to be a good resolution so that it will accommodate some zooming-in and panning.

Coloured would be good but plain colours not colour coded in any way (e.g. showing shades of blue to indicate ocean depths).

I am not looking for a freebie, though that would be nice ; anything reasonably priced is a definate candidate.

Can anyone out there in muvipix land give me a pointer on this?

Here is a link to an image of the area I am interested in - basically Aruba and everything on the image to the east.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dgeggus/c ... p-east.jpg

My thanks in advance.

[VernonRobinson]

John,
I don't have a map for you, but have you thought of consulting some of the historical texts. This might fit more of what you are looking for when the world was still flat. Also, had you considered taking a colored map and converting it to black and white? Just trying to think of additional possibilities.

-Vernon

[Steve Grisetti]

Because my job requires me to be careful about the digital rights of every piece of artwork I use, I've often used an existing map graphic as a template for my own map graphic. It's very easy.

A simple way for you to create what you want is to bring the map you posted into Photoshop Elements and use the Magic Wand tool to select only the land or only the sea. You can set the tolerance level for this tool and/or hold down the Shift key and continue to select areas.

Then you pick up stray areas (such as the text) by holding down the Shift key and adding to your selection with the Lasso or other selection tool or holding down the Alt key and using various selection tools to de-select areas.

You'll likely have only the land or only the sea selected with just a few minutes work. Then you just select a color or a gradient and fill the seleted area. (I usually create a new layer to add my color to so I don't destroy the original artwork.)

Once you've done that, go to Selection and choose Inverse. This will select everything you didn't select your first time around. Again you can just fill or, to add some dimension and texture, you can use gradients.

Sometimes I'll even create a new layer for the land then, after I color it in, I use the Photoshop effects, such as Emboss and/or Drop Shadow, so that the land seems to be in front of the land.

When you're done, output it as a JPEG and save your original as a PSD (in case you want to re-edit it later) and voila!

[Chuck Engels]

John, Have you checked the links to map graphics here http://www.chuckengels.com/videolinks.html
There are at least 4 links that might take you to others if you can't find what you want there.
Those links have lots of maps however, you might be able to find what you need.

[Steve Grisetti]

John, here's my attempt at what I was describing. Will it help at all?

I can still tweak the design at my end if you need it.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Thanks Steve.

That saves me some work in Photoshop. I had drawn the same conclusion as you (i.e. do it yourself) but I was having trouble finding a map that had sufficient high resolution to start working on so that, when finished, the image would allow zooms and pans without pixellating as one got in close.

Also the image had to accommodate the 'this was the route of the cruise' image of a ship moving around the map (if that makes sense).

Now that you've done it all for me ( and thanks again) can you e-mail the image to me at my registered address?

[Steve Grisetti]

Glad to help, John.

You should be able to click on the photo above to see the full resolution version, then right-click and choose Save As to download.

If that one isn't big enough for you, let me know and, Monday when I'm back in the office, I'll see if I can pump a bit more resolution into it.